The Jewel In The Crown (The Raj quartet)

  Unfortunately I found White – the Deputy Commissioner – not wholly alive to the situation I believed might face us if Indian leaders were allowed to continue to speak out against the war effort and rouse the masses to adopt a policy of what Mr Gandhi called non-violent non-co-operation, a policy that could bring the country to a standstill. White seemed to be convinced that when the Indian National Congress talked about non-violent non-co-operation they really meant nonviolent. He obviously had more faith than I in the ability of a demonstrating crowd to resist the hysteria that can turn it in a moment into a howling mob intent on taking revenge for some imaginary act of brutality perpetrated by the police or the military. He did not, in fact, appear to anticipate demonstrations of any magnitude, unless they were organised purely for the purpose of offering satyagraha, in defiance of the Defence of India Rules, so that the authorities would be bound to arrest the demonstrators and have their prisons filled to overflowing. My first meeting with White took place before Mr Gandhi had launched his Quit India campaign, but at a time when it was clear that the Cabinet Mission headed by Cripps was failing to reach agreement about the way in which Indian leaders could be identified more closely with the affairs of the nation. White still seemed to hope that at the last moment a working arrangement would be made. I had no such expectations. Right from the beginning of the war with Germany relations between ourselves and the Indians had steadily deteriorated. At the outset of that war Congress members of the central assembly had walked out to protest the sending abroad of Indian troops to the Middle East and Singapore and the Congress ministries in the provinces had resigned because the Viceroy had declared war without consulting them! Whatever our faults in the past, I as a simple soldier with only rudimentary political views could not help feeling that the sincere efforts we made in the years before the war to hand over more power to the Indians themselves had revealed nothing so clearly as the fact that they had not achieved the political maturity that would have made the task of granting them self-government easy. The act of 1935 which envisaged a federal government at the centre, representative of all walks of Indian life, and elected states governments in the provinces, seemed to a man like myself (who had everything to lose and nothing to gain by Indian independence) a statesman-like, indeed noble concept, one that Britain could have been proud of as a fitting end to a glorious chapter in her imperial history. Unfortunately it led only to a scramble for power and the central federal government scheme came to nothing. One could not help feeling that the heartrending cries for freedom sounded hollow in retrospect as one watched the scramble and listened to the squabbles that broke out between Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Princes and others. The Congress, for instance, openly admitted that they took provincial office in 1937 to prove that the federal scheme was unworkable at the centre and that they alone represented India. Unfortunately, this belief of theirs, that they were the democratic majority, seemed to be borne out on paper at least by their sweeping victory in the elections that were held prior to their taking provincial office Be that as it may, one would have thought that two years of provincial power, with little or no interference from the Governors, who retained a watching brief on behalf of the central government and the Crown, would have moulded statesmen, but the resignations after the declaration of war – which left the Governors with no alternative but to assume personal control – struck most of my fellow countrymen whose thoughts now lay principally with the safety of our homeland and the fight against tyranny, as proof that nothing had been learned at all of political responsibility, and that we could therefore no longer count on ‘leading’ Indians to take a broad view of the real things that were at stake in the free world.

  I think it is true to say that we came to this realisation with reluctance, and that it was a measure of our continuing hope for Indian freedom and of our readiness to extend our patience right up to its breaking point that even in our darkest hour – the defeat of our arms in South-East Asia – we opened the bowling once again on Mr Churchill’s initiative and tried hard to find a way of giving the Indians a fair crack of the whip, which was more than Hitler would have done and more than we knew could be expected of the Jap. It was clear to us, however, that chaps like Gandhi had got on to our scent and were in full cry, heedless of the ravenous yellow pack that was on to them, indeed on to all of us. On April 6th a few bombs fell on Madras. Even that did not seem to bring the Indians to their senses, in fact they blamed us more than they blamed the enemy! Inspired by Mr Gandhi they had got hold of the idea that there was no quarrel between India and Japan and that if the British absconded the Japanese wouldn’t attack her. A little later, it is true, Mr Gandhi very kindly suggested that the British army could stay in India and use it as a base from which to fight the Japanese, and that in ports like Bombay and Calcutta he could promise there wouldn’t be any riots to disrupt the flow of arms and war material! – providing of course that we had otherwise left the country to be ruled by himself and his colleagues! What he thought the strategic difference was between ceasing to govern but continuing to use India as a base was not easy to tell if you looked at the situation from the point of view of the Japanese High Command! It was clear to most of us that at last his peculiar theories were being shown up for what they were: the impractical dreams of a man who believed that everyone was – or should be – as simple and innocent as himself. There were times, of course, when we found it difficult to put even this well-meaning construction on his speeches and writings.

  When I looked out on to the maidan from the window of my room in the old artillery mess in Mayapore, or drove round the cantonment, I could not help but feel proud of the years of British rule. Even in these turbulent times the charm of the cantonment helped one to bear in mind the calm, wise and enduring things. One had only to cross the river into the native town to see that in our cantonments and civil lines we had set an example for others to follow and laid down a design for civilised life that the Indians would one day inherit. It seemed odd to think that in the battle that lay ahead to stop all this from falling into the hands of the Japanese the Indians were not on our side.

  I remembered vividly the hours spent as a young man, exercising Rajah on the Mayapore maidan, and practising polo shots with Nigel Orme, who was ADC to General Grahame and won a posthumous VC at Passchendaele. Rajah, as readers may recall from an earlier chapter, was the first polo pony I owned, and Nigel Orme, although senior to me in rank and service, one of the best and truest friends I ever had. It looked to me as if fate had called me back to the place where I first got the ‘feel’ of India and first realised that whatever success or failure was in store for me in the profession I had chosen, there would always be a sense of oneness with the country and a feeling of identification with our aspirations for it. I remembered Meg as she had been in my thoughts then, all those years ago, so calm, so collected, kind and generous, ever ready with a smile – to me the most beautiful girl in the world. And I thought of our son, Alan, and of our daughter Caroline – safe now from Nazi or Japanese frightfulness, thank heaven, with her Aunt Cissie in Toronto. These three were truly my hostages to fortune and our fine boy seemed already to have been taken from us in part payment. More than anything else in the world I wished for victory to our arms, health and happiness for Meg, and to be reunited with her and darling Caroline and young Alan. I do not think that any of us older serving soldiers can be blamed if, at the time, we felt bitter that the country which had benefited in so many ways from British rule appeared determined to hinder our efforts to save it from invasion at a time when we could least spare the strength. Pondering these matters on the level at which they affected me personally I couldn’t help wishing that I could be left to concentrate on my main task and leave the politicians to ‘muddle through’ in their own mysterious ways. But I knew that this could not be. The brigade was my responsibility, but so was the safety of our women and children and the peace of the district as a whole. Those of us who were in contact with ‘places higher up’
knew that it was thought we must be prepared to face the gravest danger from within the camp as well as from outside it; from the enemy in the tent as well as from the enemy at the gate; and that it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Congress planned the kind of open rebellion that could snowball into a campaign of terror and bloodshed and civil war such as we had not seen in India since the days of the Mutiny. As events proved later our anxieties on this score were only too well-founded. Before the summer was out the country was in the grip of rebellion and in Mayapore the commotions got off to the worst kind of Start. It was in this pleasant old district that two dastardly attacks on Englishwomen were made, within a few hours of each other; the first upon an elderly mission teacher, Miss Crane, and the second on a young woman, Daphne Manners, who was criminally assaulted in a place called the Bibighar Gardens.

  Although on first acquaintance Mr Deputy Commissioner White and I did not, as they say nowadays, hit it off, I came presently to admire his tenacity. For me his physical courage was never in doubt, and I judged, correctly as it turned out, that he would never allow any personal reservations he might have about official government policy to sway him in his dutiful application of it in his own district. As a case in point, when I asked him rather bluntly what he would do if he had orders to arrest leaders of the local sub-committee of the Congress party (I knew that District Officers had been warned to keep special note of those of them whose prompt imprisonment might halt the tide of rebellion), he replied, quite simply, ‘Well, arrest them of course,’ but then added, ‘even though I know that that is the very worst thing we can do.’

  I asked him why he felt this. He said, ‘Because the kind of men I would have to arrest are those who honestly believe in non-violence and have the power to move the crowd to self-sacrifice rather than to attack. Put such fellows in clink and you leave the crowd to a different kind of leader altogether.’

  I could not agree, but recognised the sincerity of White’s convictions. Of course to me, mass satyagraha was almost as harmful as open revolt. Naturally I asked him what he knew of or proposed to do about the kind of leader who might take the place of the Congressmen he had such faith in. He said, ‘Oh well, that’s like looking for needles in haystacks. A few are known. You can arrest those. But the others go free, and among them probably the most efficient because they’ve been efficient enough not to become known. You could spend your life working up a secret file and still miss the key chaps because Congress doesn’t know them and you don’t know them. They’re nothing to do with Congress at all. They’re young or middle-aged fellows with bees in their bonnets who think Congress the lickspittle of the Raj. Well, who has a life to spend detecting that kind of needle in this kind of haystack? Isn’t it better to leave the fellows who have nothing to gain by violence free to control the crowd and direct it in true satyagraha?’

  I told him that what he said probably made sense, so long as you could trust originally in the concept of non-violence, which I personally thought a lot of eye-wash. Pressed further, White admitted that he left what he called ‘the needles in the haystack’ to his District Superintendent of Police, a man called Merrick, whom I had met on a previous occasion and instinctively liked.

  Although White’s attitude left me in some uncertainty about the degree of determination to be expected from the civil power in the event of trouble in this district, I was confident that the police could be counted on to act swiftly and efficiently if need be.

  White’s thinking was wholly ‘modern’, typical of the new-style administration of the Thirties that had to take into account every half-baked notion that was relevant to the workable solution of a problem. The judge was an Indian called Menen, an old-school Indian I was glad to notice, but somewhat self-contained in true judicial style. Of the triumvirate only young Merrick, the District Superintendent of Police, seemed to me to have seized happily upon the greater freedom of action that the war and the Congress provincial resignations had given to district rule.

  I had a special meeting with Merrick and told him that I relied upon him to use his discretion, particularly in regard to what the Deputy Commissioner had called ‘the needles in the haystack’. I put it to him bluntly that I had a brigade to command and train for use against the enemy at the gate and not, if I could help it, for use against the enemy in the camp. I told him I would appreciate it if he stuck his neck out occasionally. I had not mistaken my man. He was young enough still to respond to simple issues with the right mixture of probity and keenness. I could not help but admire him, too, for his outspokenness. He was a man who came from what he called ‘a very ordinary middle-class background’. The Indian Police had been the one job he felt he could do. I knew what he meant, and liked him for his total lack of pretence. Police duties are always disagreeable, but they have to be carried out. Now that we were at war with the Axis Powers he regretted the circumstances that had led him to undertake service in a field that precluded him from wearing a different uniform. He asked me, in fact, what chance there was of strings being pulled to release him so that he could join up ‘even as a private’. Thinking of Alan – whom physically he somewhat resembled – I appreciated his patriotic scale of values, but was unable to give him any hope of a transfer. In any case, I realised that in the present situation he was more valuable to his country as head of the local police than he would be as an untrained junior officer, let alone as a private soldier. He promised to comply with my request to keep me informed, sub rosa, of the temper of the district as he gauged it to be.

  Having seen and talked to White and to Merrick I felt that I had done as much as could be done for the moment to buy time in which to concentrate on my job without too often casting a glance in the direction of a local threat to our security. In any case the arrival of my third battalion, the —th Ranpurs, gave me plenty to do. Originally I had been promised a battalion of Sikhs, but one from my old regiment was, needless to say, an even greater boost to my morale! Bringing one company of the Ranpurs into the Mayapore barracks (and so relieving the Berkshires of some of their station guard duties) I sent their remaining companies and the battalion headquarters into the area of Marpuri, northwest of Mayapore, an area I had already selected as the best of two likely sites chosen by my brigade staff. Now that my command was complete I could really get down to work!

  *

  The Berkshires were settling down well. The move from Banyaganj into the cantonment had certainly done the trick. The old barracks near the artillery mess were spacious and cool, and the men enjoyed the unaccustomed luxury of being able to avail themselves within reason of the ministrations of the native servants attached to the barracks, many of whom were the sons of men who had looked after an earlier generation of Tommies. They were now also closer on hand to the home entertainments so readily laid on by our ladies. It was, incidentally, many years since there had actually been a gunner regiment stationed in Mayapore, but the artillery mess had been famous in its day and naturally the name had stuck. In recent years Mayapore had been the home of an NCOs’ school and the cool weather station of the Pankots. Since the war began it had turned itself virtually into a brigade staging point. Unfortunately, from the point of view of my brigade staff, the colonel-commandant of the NCOs’ school who had also acted as station commander was on sick leave upon my arrival – a leave that turned out to be permanent because the school was transferred to the Punjab – so I inherited on paper at least the station commander’s role. The Station Staff Officer (whom I managed to retain) had to do most of the work that would normally have rested on the station commander’s shoulders, but he was an old ranker and a hard and dedicated worker.

  I had elected to live in the artillery mess itself rather than move into the accommodation that was available to me, not only because my poor Meg was unable to join me and establish a household, which she had done so often before, in so many different parts of India, but because I felt I wanted to be on constant call and in a position to keep my staff on its toes.
The rooms I occupied in the mess in the old guest suite which overlooked the maidan, were spacious but simple. There in the little sitting-room that I had turned into a private office, I could find a retreat from the press of routine to think out the best solutions to the many problems that confronted me. But it was in this room, towards the end of June, when the rains had just begun, that Tubby Carter rang me with the news that Alan was reported a prisoner-of-war. Somehow one had always gone on hoping that he would reach India safely with one of the parties of our troops and civilians who had struggled back against great odds and in conditions of great privation to be restored to those who most sorely missed them. I asked Tubby if he would break the news to Meg. And here Tubby proved himself once again a good and true friend who, although my senior in rank, was always ready to use his seniority for the welfare of an old comrade-in-arms. He ordered me to Rawalpindi so that I could break the news to her myself. In less than thirty-two hours of Tubby’s telephone call I was at Meg’s bedside.

  Neither Meg nor I had any illusions about what it meant to be a captive of the Japanese, but we found solace in the knowledge that Alan was alive and – if we knew our son – probably kicking. Speaking of him to her, I felt the relief it was to do so knowing that at least it was in order to think of him in the present rather than the past tense. That evening Tubby came to the nursing home with a bottle of champagne. In ordinary circumstances it might have seemed wrong to drink champagne at a time when our son was probably suffering hardship, but Tubby put things into perspective by raising his glass and inviting us to drink to Alan’s safe return. I was proud of Meg when she raised her glass too and said simply, ‘To Alan,’ and smiled as if he were there in the room and the occasion of the toast a happy one. In the few long weeks that we had been separated she seemed to have gone down hill alarmingly. She had lost more weight and her eyes no longer sparkled. I realised suddenly that Tubby had not ordered me back to Rawalpindi only to break the news of Alan’s capture to her but so that I could face up to the graver news that eventually I would have to bear.